We do not have a television.  I have thought of buying one, but decided on buying a PC instead.  The children obviously liked the PC as I bought it fully-loaded with games.  Not only that, since I got Globe Broadband, our internet life has never been this good.  Now, I can work full time as a freelance webworker in oDesk and we also have loads of information at the tip of our fingers– oh, the advantages of the internet is countless.

I read my news, blogs using NewsNetWire.  I keep track of over 300 RSS feeds daily, and I fire it up as a rule only twice a day.

Tyrell my 3 year old can watch all the Spiderman cartoons that he like and my daughters can play all the dress-up games in Y8.  Not only that, they can watch their movies and reruns– all in YouTube.

Today my daughters Alis and Freida received their ribbons.  Pascalis is 5th in her class.  I am so happy that she managed to get a ribbon since she really worked hard this year and struggled with Filipino.  Freida made it to 4th in her class as well as Most Behave Award.  Naks…

Anyway, to make it worse, I took the digital camera with me without the batteries… DUH…

I also took the opportunity to drop by digitalhub to seek the help of an Apple Technician.  Well, it was confirmed that my adapter was indeed fried and I needed to replace it.

It cost me

I panicked the other day when I woke up to rush to my Macbook to work and discovered it failed to charge overnight.  I was surprised to see the battery life at 22%.  I tried wiggling the adapter and noticed that the green indicator was off.  I went to Mac website to search “battery” at support and went nowhere.  To make it worse, one of my clients went online and asked me to help with the research for an article he was doing an I almost died…

This was perhaps the worst day of my life as a webworker.  I panicked and turn off the dying Macbook and rushed to my daughter’s PC and when I go there, I realized that all my important data were in the Macbook…  In short, I did my work in the PC and proceeded with the search for answer.  I dreaded that something worse must have happened to my Macbook.  Dang, how much would a new battery cost?  A quick check at the Philippines Apple Store gave me the figure of P6,990 for the battery…

What???  I almost cried…

I checked philmug.ph for help and I got immediate response and the advise that I got was that the problem was probably the adapter or the battery.  Since my children and I were scheduled to head for town the next day, I used their PC for my webwork and I was simply lost.  The bookmarks in the other PC was not updated, not to mention that my passwords were all in my Macbook.

I was lost… and to make it worse, my children kept hounding me if I was done with work because my daughters wanted to use the computer and play online games at y8.com.  Ayay!!!  My head started to beat and I felt like dying, so I decided to…

Having launched my freelance work full time now has given me confidence and more sense of independence.  Although I love the fact that I am earning some dollars into my account, the manifestations and effects of my work is beginning to take its toll on me and my children.

Time Zone Difference.  My work hours start at 6pm.  I needed to report to my clients and receive instructions either via Skype or email.  At first I managed to wing it.  Sleeping a couple of hours during the day and taking short naps at night whenever I can.  When I am expected to report or speak with my clients, I set my cellphone and alarm and it worked for awhile until I started to feel the effects of sleepless nights.

For one, whenever I am awake, my children especially the small ones wakes up too.  It seem like they have a mommy is awake detector…  I started missing sleeps and these affected my work as most of my tasks are time bound.  Not only that, whenever the babies are up, they both wanted to be cuddled.  Just imagine me hunched infront of the computer trying to finish article, or trying to create a powerpoint presentation or monitoring website activities while cuddling one and even two children on my lap.  It is a wonder I still managed to finish, beat deadlines and receive good feedbacks on my work.  To me, this is one of the indications that I am good at this, and I can be better.

Financially, I am beginning to enjoy the fruits of my hardwork and late nights.  I have already opened accounts on several local banks and have been saving more.  The feeling of independence is definitely great… and yes, I can now buy all the books that I want without blinking and hesitating.

Finally!  I snagged lifediscourse.com and got my friend Emily to install this cool theme for me.  I am so happy with the entire look and look forward to tweaking the theme and installing my own plugins.

I am currently very busy with my freelance work and I am currently adjusting to my work load.  My children are also adjusting with my work as I am up late at night since I work during EST and GMTimes.  It was pretty confusing and my body clock went haywire for awhile.

I have also installed several widgets in my Macbook so I can track time and my to-do list.  At any rate, I am happy that I am earning some cash myself and I did not have to worry about our finances now.  I have been praying hard for this and I am happy that I am able to earn additional income for my children and myself and I didn’t even have to leave the house!

I am just in cloud nine!

Thank you to Emily again and to my friends Karen and Cherryl who are with me all the way.  I love you guys!